Mixture of LA funded and privately funded care?

Registered User

At the moment, my MIL has a small amount of savings (under £14k) and lives in her own house that she owns outright. The LA are paying for her to have 4 carer visits in the day, and she is making a contribution towards that from her pension & attendance allowance, but she really needs someone there at night and the LA have been very clear that they will not provide that. She is flatly refusing to consider a care home.

We are considering using a private agency to provide additional night time care using her savings until they run out (when she will probably have to go into a care home and be self-funding from the sale of her house). Are there any pitfalls or problems we should be looking out for if we do this?